New Year’s Resolutions – 5 Ways to Make Them Stick

It’s a New Year and a new day breaking and getting organized is one of the top three New Year’s resolutions people make. Is it one you made? Did you resolve to get organized everywhere in your life? Or, did you select one small change towards organization? If it is the former, you may be biting off too much, and that will lessen your chances of being successful. Let’s set you up for success with your organizing resolution.

Start Small – Make one organizing resolution at a time and build on it. If your organizing resolution is to organize your household papers, start with the pile on your kitchen counter and create a system based on your current paperwork before organizing your past filed/piled papers.

Make a Plan – Schedule time to work on your organizing project, but don’t schedule too much time. For many people, making decisions is emotional and exhausting. Rather than spending eight hours on organizing your household papers, break it down into four two-hour blocks of time.

Change One Behavior at a Time – If your behavior is to bring the mail in and plonk it on the kitchen counter to “deal with later” leading to a mountain of mail to go through “later”, make it a habit to open your mail daily weeding out the recycling/trash mail from the action mail.

Follow-through – We often separate tasks that prevent us from completing them. For example, we separate the task of sorting our mail from recycling/trash and action but then leave it on the kitchen counter. The follow-through action to completing the task is to put the recycling mail in the recycling bin and the action paper where we will take action on it–most likely at a desk.

Accountability – You will be more successful if you have support or an accountability buddy to help towards your commitment to getting organized.

Ready to get organized? I’m here to support you towards achieving your organizing resolutions. Get Started by contacting us for a no-cost 15-minute phone consultation.